Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family

In December 2008, the world watched as master financier Bernard L. Madoff was taken away from his posh Manhattan apartment in handcuffs, accused of swindling thousands of innocent victims - including friends and family - out of billions of dollars in the world's largest Ponzi scheme. Madoff went to jail; he will spend the rest of his life there. But what happened to his devoted wife and sons?

The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust

Who is Bernie Madoff, and how did he pull off the biggest Ponzi scheme in history? These questions have fascinated people ever since the news broke about the respected New York financier who swindled his friends, relatives, and other investors out of $65 billion. Many have speculated about what must have happened, but no reporter has been able to get the full story - until now. Diana B. Henriques of the New York Times has written the definitive book on the man and his scheme.

The Madoff Chronicles: Inside the Secret World of Bernie and Ruth

The collapse of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme led to the instant evaporation of $65 billion of wealth. The effects of Madoff's brazen fraud were felt most closely in New York and Palm Beach but the story was, and continues to be, front page news across the country.

After Perfect: A Daughter's Memoir

In the tradition of New York Times best sellers What Remains by Carole Radziwill and Oh the Glory of It All by Sean Wilsey, Christina McDowell's unflinching memoir is a brutally honest, cautionary tale about one family's destruction in the wake of the Wall Street implosion.

Too Good to Be True: The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff

Erin Arvedlund, the financial reporter who questioned the amazing returns of Bernie Madoff's hedge funds way back in 2001, traces the life of the infamous swindler and addresses the tough questions surrounding the collapse of his Ponzi scheme.

Jackie's Girl: My Life with the Kennedy Family

In 1964 Kathy McKeon was just 19 years old and newly arrived from Ireland when she was hired as the personal assistant to former first lady Jackie Kennedy. The next 13 years of her life were spent in Jackie's service, during which Kathy not only played a crucial role in raising young Caroline and John Jr. but also had a front-row seat to some of the 20th century's most significant events.

Diana: Her True Story - in Her Own Words

The sensational biography of Princess Diana, now revised to commemorate the 20th anniversary of her death. When Diana: Her True Story - in Her Own Words was first published in 1992, it forever changed the way the public viewed the British monarchy.

A Beautiful, Terrible Thing: A Memoir of Marriage and Betrayal

What do you do when you discover that the person you've built your life around never existed? When "it could never happen to me" does happen to you? These are the questions facing Jen Waite when she begins to realize that her loving husband - the father of her infant daughter, her best friend, the love of her life - fits the textbook definition of psychopath. In a raw, first-person account, Waite recounts each heartbreaking discovery, every life-destroying lie, and reveals what happens once the dust finally settles on her demolished marriage.

The Foundling: The True Story of a Kidnapping, a Family Secret, and My Search for the Real Me

The Foundling tells the incredible and inspiring true story of Paul Fronczak, a man who recently discovered via a DNA test that he was not who he thought he was - and set out to solve two 50-year-old mysteries at once. Along the way he upturned the genealogy industry, unearthed his family's deepest secrets, and broke open the second longest cold-case in US history, all in a desperate bid to find out who he really is.

Dangerous Ground: My Friendship with a Serial Killer

In September 2011, M. William Phelps made a bold decision that would change the landscape of reality-based television - and his own life. He asked a convicted serial killer to act as a consultant for his TV series. Under the code name Raven, the murderer shared his insights into the minds of other killers and helped analyze their crimes. As the series became an international sensation, Raven became Phelps' unlikely confidant, ally - and friend.

The I-5 Killer

As a young man, Randall Woodfield had it all; he was a star athlete with good looks and an award-winning student. Working in the swinging West Coast bar scene, he had more than his share of women. But he wanted more than just sex. An appetite for unspeakable violent acts led him to cruise the I-5 highway through California to Washington, leaving a trail of victims along the way. As the list of the dead grew, the police mobilized to stop a twisted killer who had 44 known deaths to his name.

No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller

No One Would Listen is the exclusive story of the Harry Markopolos-lead investigation into Bernie Madoff and his $65 billion Ponzi scheme. While a lot has been written about Madoff's scam, few actually know how Markopolos and his team - affectionately called "the Fox Hounds" by Markopolos himself - uncovered what Madoff was doing years before this financial disaster reached its pinnacle. Unfortunately, no one listened, until the damage of the world's largest financial fraud ever was irreversible.

Happiness: A Memoir: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After

Happiness begins with a charming courtship between hopelessly attracted opposites: Heather, a world-roaming California girl, and Brian, an intellectual, homebody writer, kind and slyly funny, but loath to leave his Upper West Side studio. Their magical interlude ends, full stop, when Heather becomes pregnant - Brian is sure he loves her, only he doesn't want kids. Heather returns to California to deliver their daughter alone, buoyed by family and friends.

Madoff with the Money

Madoff with the Money is a deeply disturbing portrait of Bernie Madoff based on dozens of exclusive, news-making interviews. From the values Madoff was taught growing up in the working-class town of Laurelton, Queens, to his high-life on Wall Street and the super-rich enclaves of Palm Beach and the French Riviera, best-selling author Jerry Oppenheimer follows the disgraced money manager's trail as he works his way up the social and economic ladder, and eventually scams his clients in a $50-billion Ponzi scheme.

A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Over the course of minutes, they would kill 12 students and a teacher and wound 24 others before taking their own lives. For the last 16 years, Sue Klebold, Dylan's mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong?

For Laci: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, and Justice

Every mother's worst fear became Sharon Rocha's reality. On Christmas Eve 2002, she received a phone call from her son-in-law saying that her daughter, Laci, was missing. In the hours, days, and eventually months that followed, Sharon struggled to avoid accepting what no parent should ever have to face: the certain knowledge that her child is never coming home.

Above Suspicion

A personal look at a crime of passion describes an FBI agent's successful career, family life, and extramarital affair that ended in murder, and the guilt that drove him to confess in spite of his impenetrable government shield. In a true story of crime, guilt, and conscience, a model agent's illicit involvement with an informant leads him to commit a crime that reveals all the workings of the human heart - and the dark side of the FBI.

My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward: A Memoir

Mark and Giulia's life together began as a storybook romance. They fell in love at 18, married at 24, and were living their dream life in San Francisco. When Giulia was 27, she suffered a terrifying and unexpected psychotic break that landed her in the psych ward for nearly a month. One day she was vibrant and well adjusted; the next she was delusional and suicidal, convinced that her loved ones were not safe.

Bette & Joan: The Divine Feud

This joint biography of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford follows Hollywood's most epic rivalry throughout their careers. They only worked together once, in the classic spine-chiller What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, and their violent hatred of each other as rival sisters was no act. In real life they fought over as many men as they did film roles.

Fairy Tale Interrupted: A Memoir of Life, Love, and Loss

To everyone else, John F. Kennedy Jr. may have been American royalty, but to RoseMarie Terenzio, he was an entitled nuisance—and she wasn’t afraid to let him know it. RoseMarie was his personal assistant, his publicist, and one of his closest confidantes during the last five years of his life. In this, her first memoir, she bravely recounts her own fairy tale interrupted, describing the unlikely friendship between a blue-collar girl from the Bronx and John F. Kennedy Jr.

A Little Thing Called Life: On Loving Elvis Presley, Bruce Jenner, and Songs in Between

Award-winning songwriter Linda Thompson breaks her silence, sharing the extraordinary story of her life, career, and epic romances with two of the most celebrated yet enigmatic modern American superstars - Elvis Presley and Bruce Jenner.

The Secrets of My Life: A History

The book will cover Caitlyn Jenner's childhood as Bruce Jenner and rise to fame as a gold-medal-winning Olympic decathlete; her marriages and her relationships with her children; her transition; and her experience as the world's most famous transgender woman.

American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

In 2011, a 26-year-old libertarian programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine website hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything - drugs, hacking software, forged passports, counterfeit cash, poisons - free of the government's watchful eye. It wasn't long before the media got wind of the new website where anyone - not just teenagers and weed dealers but terrorists and black hat hackers - could buy and sell contraband detection-free.

Publisher's Summary

An explosive, heartbreaking memoir from the widow of Mark Madoff and daughter-in-law of Bernard Madoff, the first genuine inside story from a family member who has lived through - and survived - both the public crisis and her own deeply personal tragedy.

When the news of Bernard Madoff 's Ponzi scheme broke, Americans were shocked and outraged, perhaps none more so than the unsuspecting members of his own family. After learning that their father's legendarily successful wealth management company was "all just one big lie", Mark and Andrew Madoff turned their father in and cut off all communication with both parents.

Mark and his wife, Stephanie, strove to make a fresh start for the sake of their two young children, but Mark could not overcome his sense of betrayal and shame - he and other family members were sued for $200 million in October of 2009. He hung himself on the two-year anniversary of his father's arrest. Left to raise her children as a single mother, Stephanie wrote this memoir to give them a sense of who their father really was, defend his innocence, and put her personal statement on record once and for all.

In this candid insider account, she talks about her idyllic wedding to Mark on Nantucket, what it was really like to be a part of the Madoff family, the build-up to Bernard's confession, and the media frenzy that followed. It is about the loss of the fairytale life she knew, adjusting to life with a man she hardly recognized anymore, and the tragic and final loss of her husband.

Unfortunately, the author chose to narrate the book. Her voice is nasal and annoying.

I will give the author credit for not making herself a heroine. She comes across as a very difficult person who behaves selfishly many times.

The book presents a skewed view on the exposure of Bernie Madoff. This author flatly says that the two sons exposed their father, but other accounts I have read of the affair have described the investigation differently.

One does develop a sympathy for Mark Madoff and the sad end to his life, but other than gaining insight into the what propelled him to take his own life, the book does not add much information to what is already known. Most everyone in it, including the author, appear to be rather shallow, mean, and materialistic.

The ending was already well known, so there were not any surprises. It was sad, of course. In most cases, loss of life is not a victory.

What didn’t you like about Stephanie Madoff Mack’s performance?

I believe that narrating her book was therapeutic for Stephanie. As for me, I didn't need the co-therapy and would have enjoyed a professional narrator.

Do you think The End of Normal needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

No. I personally would not purchase a follow up book. I'm through. Too much therapy for my liking.

Any additional comments?

Stephanie's attempt to portray herself as a penniless Cinderella is not believable and collides with her admission that an attorney was hired to protect her assets. If she didn't have any assets in the beginning of the marriage and her husband/father-in-law did not funnel dirty money to her during the marriage, what assets were in need of protection? She was quite angry toward Ruth as she did not immediately sever ties to her husband of 50+ years. According to Stephanie's perspective, Ruth was blinded by denial surrounding Bernie, the crook. However, Stephanie exhibits the same characteristics in her relationship with her husband, whom she claims was a mere innocent bystander, as well as victim, of the tragedy caused by his father. It was hard for me to conjure up sympathy for the poor rich kids who had become adults. There are too many unacknowledged questions which Stephanie chose to leave alone. I will add that I appreciate the review by another reader who said the story was troubling on many levels. It is and that is very accurate. I continue to be bothered by what I learned -- and did not learn -- through this book.

Didn't expect this... I loved the book and fell in love with Stephanie. I felt like she could be one of my friends and was sharing her story girlfriend to girlfriend. I actually looked forward to walking my dog, so I could hear more. Her story is brutally honest and raw. My heart aches for her and for the journey ahead. I had my preconceived notions and judgments about the family, which I feel badly about now. The media twists things and distorts them, without proof, quite frequently. (Especially in our sensationalized 24/7 news ticker/ diarrhea blogosphere world.) Why did I buy into their opinion of the Madoff brothers? Regardless of your opinion about innocence and guilt... her story as a wife and mother deserves to be heard. Mark's story deserves to be heard.

I was disgusted most of the time listening to this story, yet it was so engaging and such a good testimony to the Madoff's family values. Son reporting his father's crime to the authorities and cutting off all the ties with his mother when she is in distress... Is not family all about unconditional love and support, no matter how bad the crime is or how devastating the impact? The attempt to convince the readers/listeners that the sons had no idea is laughable. Of course they knew, or suspected but chose not to admit to themselves. Being a part of the family and the business for 20+ years and not suspecting that numbers don't add up - impossible. The complains about the hardship of the life afterwards are ridiculous - how many Americans can pay several thousands to be able to run the marathon? Or hire a team of lawyers? Nothing in this story made me sympathetic, but it was very interesting to hear another side of the story, from a family member.

Listening to this story left me feeling very sorry for Mark Madoff getting to the point of such desperation that he took his own life and for Stephanies loss, as well as her childrens, but at the same time, left me wanting to say to Stephanie, "Oh boo hoo... You were left with an apartment, houses and more money to live on than you need..how many woman have had to start over with absolutely nothing?"

Having said that, it is an interesting story. If you've ever wondered about what it's like to live like a Madoff, this will give you a glimpse into that kind of lifestyle..

After listening to it, I really doubt that Mark, or his brother, knew what his father had done. I don't think they were a party to it and really just a victim like all Madoff's other victims. It's too bad he was judged and treated so harshly by the media and the public for what his father did.

Stephanie, on the other hand.. hmmmm....you know how some people just have that sound to their voice? Like they're part of the elite population? That's what her voice sounds like.. It annoyed me.. She comes from money, although, it doesn't sound like she was brought up filthy rich, but she obviously had more than the average American growing up.

She sounds very angry at Marks mother for standing by Bernie Madoff.. I found this disturbing.. She's a young woman who has decided that she knows more about life than her older mother in law.. Seems like a lot of young people these days think they have all the answers. But it isn't that simple. Ruth has been with Bernie since she was a young woman in her teens.. What Bernie did was horrible, but you can't tell Ruth to turn her feelings off just because you think she should be able to.. Stephanie just kind of seems like a person that can hold a grudge for a very long time, and will.

Having said that, I do feel sorry for Stephanie.. I wonder how much of her complaining about the situation helped to push Mark over the edge, but at the same time, I totally understand that sometimes life situations push you so far you become someone you don't want to be. And I wonder how much guilt she is living with knowing she could have maybe handled her anger a little differently, especially the last night of Marks life.. It kind of sounded like she expected Mark to make this all go away and resented him for getting her mixed up in it. She also seems to have put a lot of blame on Ruth for Marks suicide, thinking that if Ruth had left Bernie, Mark would not have been driven to do what he did... One has to think he still would have felt the same pressures and it probably would have ended the same way.

When your very name becomes a swear word. When this crime came to light, it was very easy to relate to the victims, but I never even thought about the family as victims. This book serves it's author's purpose as a eulogy to her husband, Mark Madoff. It is a little uneven and some sections are repetitive. But in grief things do tend to go around and around. For the most part the story is well written, giving details of a very charmed life. Just a beautiful happy family, good jobs, precious children, lovely homes, the American dream, until the day it was just torn apart. Stephanie has written from the heart (and not always to her own credit) about how one begins to cope or not when the the worst has happened and then continues to happen, in public and there is nothing you can control at all. Stephanie does an incredible job reading her own story.

Although it is really voyeuristic on my part, I have remained very curious about the Madoff affair, wondering how family members of Bernie could not have known. After listening to this book (and reading The Wizard of Lies), I now believe that family members did not know, and I could see how it all could happen.I think Stephanie Mack does a really good job of setting it out in a believable, truthful way, and gives the reader insight into the Madoff family. It's hard not to feel bad for her - her life has been very difficult, and full of tragedy in the last 5 or so years. If you are interested to understand more about how the Madoff fraud was pulled off so successfully, then listen to this book.

This is a difficult book to listen to. I feel so sorry for this poor family, all members of this family. My heart goes out to Stephanie's kids the most. Yes, Bernie Madoff abused all around him. There is no doubt. All suffered because of his greed. However, a worse abuse to children is having a father abandon them through the act of suicide. This is a far graver offense though I can not judge what emotional turmoil Stephanie's husband endured. Our public, our media is cruel. It's all so tragic. I can't imagine how Stephanie has endured. I hope she and her children find peace.